Jan 5 2009

25 Signs You’ve Got a Strong SM Consultant or Agency

January 5, 2009 – 10:00 am

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by Beth Harte (cross-posted on the Harte of Marketing) and Geoff Livingston

Our original post “Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert Is a Carpetbagger” was really meant as a silly riff in reaction to the sudden rush of folks offering social media services in the wake of the economic crisis. The post was never meant to be anything more than half rant/half humor, but the 180+ comments on both of our blogs indicate that we touched a much bigger nerve. Since it’s a prescient topic, we’d like to offer a more serious, positive post to help marketers make a good choice in consultants (image by tigermatt).

A couple of precursors. We’re just starting the list. Feel free to add, balk, or digress.

Secondly, not having a few of these isn’t a death sentence. Social media communications is still a really new industry, and there are no silver bullet experts or methodologies. To help separate the wheat from the chaff, we are sharing these general suggestions, but if many qualifiers are missing in your potential partner’s offering, as a marketer, PR or communications professional you should probably be concerned.

Lastly, we’ve cited examples. This is not an echo chamber or buddy list (sorry to our buddies not on the list, we only wanted to list one per qualifier). In some cases, we’ve never met said examples, but we know their work.

Finally, there are many qualified SM consultants/agencies. In the case of larger agencies, we can’t vouch for them, but can safely recommend individuals. It would be impossible to list all of the many qualified social media partners. Instead, we refer you to Charlene Li’s Altimeter Wiki as a starting place. We also invite you to give hat tips in the comments section.

OK, here we go again:

1) Believes in the generous web and practices cross-linking in their blog (example: Kami Huyse)

2) Highlights others’ work in their blog (example: Chris Brogan)

3) Integrates social media as part of larger marketing strategy(example: Razorfish)

4) Doesn’t pretend to be an expert in all things digital; instead simply focuses on what he/she/they do best (example: Common Craft)

5) Gives away best practices in an effort to educate, grow social media in general (example: Todd Defren/SHIFT Communications)

6) Understands that Radian6 and other monitoring tools are vastly superior tracking tools in comparison to Technorati (which really isn’t an indicator of much these days) (example: Fleishman’s Matt Dickman)

7) Will tell you that there is no magic bullet for determining social media ROI and that you need to go further to accurately monitor, measure and determine the effectiveness of social media. (example: K.D. Paine).

8) Understands that social media is an important part of the larger word of mouth marketing principles (example: Ogilvy’s John Bell)

9) Others cite this person/agency’s work (example: see the many here and here)

10) Realizes that search engine optimization represents an absolutely crucial part of social media (example: TopRank’s Lee Odden)

11) Understands that social media expands beyond search engine optimization tactics that lead to Diggs, Stumbles (StumbleUpon) and link baiting (example: Key Relevance’s Li Evans)

12) Integrates brick and mortar events with social media activity (example: Voce’s Josh Hallet)

13) Has and continues to work on notable social media projects (example: Andy Sernovitz)

14) Understands that conversations are the starting place and not the end game. And though ROI is critical, knows that without conversation you’re not going anywhere (example: Paul Chaney).

15) Understands that social networking and conversation is more than collecting followers and subscribers (example: Mack Collier)

16) Listens to you when you are discussing your challenges (example: Connie Reece)

17) Helps and guides clients so that they can understand the benefits of social media and implement it properly (themselves) (example: Amber Naslund)

18) Knows that social networking works best when they are conversing, sharing, and being human (i.e. doesn’t self-promote) (example: Jason Falls)

19) Educates clients on understanding that they no longer own or control their brand and educates them on how to create customer evangelists (example: Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba)

20) Won’t act as your social media ‘voice’ or ghostwrite for you (example: Laura Bergells)

21) Understands the difference between social media tools and communications strategy (example: Ogilvy’s Rohit Bhargarva)

22) They won’t recommend blogging as a first step into social media (example: David Armano) and when you are ready to begin they consult you on how to be successful (example: Drew McLellan)

23 Doesn’t allow clients to be affected by Shiny New Object syndrome (example: Beth Kanter)

24 Understands that social media is more than just creating and delivering content or regurgitating existing promotional copy Joseph Jaffe

25 Understands that social media isn’t the sole terrain of marketing or PR and helps clients educate internally to other departments
(example: Media Badger)

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Internet Marketing, Interviews, communications, social media | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (95)
Dec 19 2008

Talking Digital Media with The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy

December 19, 2008 – 10:00 am

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy seeks to improve the lives and future prospects of children and families. The organization strives to ensure that these children are born into stable homes and raised by two-parent families. The National Campaign’s goal is to reduce the teen pregnancy rate and unplanned pregnancy among young adults.

clip_image002Lawrence Swiader is the Director of Digital Media at The National Campaign and relays responsible values and messages to obtain their goal by using social media, games, mobile devices and the Web. Prior to The National Campaign, Lawrence worked at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for ten years where he established an award-winning Web presence for the Museum.

BB: What was your biggest achievement on the social media front in 2008?

LS: Having just joined The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy in October, 2008, my biggest achievements would have to be described as working on the small things. This included making sure that our blog, Pregnant Pause , was listed on all the right directories and that my colleagues felt ownership for writing into the blog.  In addition, a presence for The National Campaign was created in Twitter , Facebook , Delicious , YouTube and other important Web destinations.

BB: Tell us about your organization’s marketing/communications strategy for 2009.

LS: The National Campaign’s marketing strategy for 2009 emphasizes new outreach to young adults, 18 – 30, to prevent unplanned pregnancy.  Over half of all pregnancies in this age group are unplanned.  This is a big problem and a large, national group.  We believe that the way to reach our audience is to invest some time in a destination site, yes, but also to create small products (there are a lot of group producers out there) that can be marketed effectively via social networks.

BB: What big hairy audacious social media goals will help you achieve your objectives next year?

LS: Our biggest social media goals next year will be to leverage the tools to create an audience from scratch around some new audio and video series.  In addition, with a new administration, a big goal would be to affect new the health policy by including family planning issues.  Social networks can be used to bring some awareness to the issue.

Social media will also allow us to bring people together around sexual health and birth planning issues to allow the newly-formed community to learn from one another.

Bad reaction to a form of birth control?  Tell the community.  Someone has had that problem before.

You’re not alone.  What’s even better is that once people start sharing information, we can feed aggregate information back to the community to help it make better choices.

This kind of information sharing and data mining is why people like Facebook and how Google predicts when the flu might hit your area.  There is no telling what insights await us of we can just gain access to the information and think creatively about it.

BB: How do you plan to integrate your social media efforts with the rest of your marketing mix (e.g., direct mail, email marketing, mobile, media relations, etc.)?

LS: The little things help us to integrate our social media efforts with everything else we do.  For example, including a “follow me” link to our Twitter account on all correspondences,  inviting partners to guest blog, and doing stories in print and online publications about The National Campaign’s social media work are ways to “shuffle the deck.”  Instead of building a landing page where, in the past, we would have accepted comments via an invitation sent via an electronic newsletter, we will invite people to comment into a blog thereby raising awareness to that outlet and avoiding reinventing the wheel.

BB: What is one challenge you face when executing new, social and/or digital media strategy? How are you overcoming this hurdle?

LS: The main hurdle I see is that many people still don’t understand social technology though they believe we have to be involved in some way.  Social networking activities are not hard but they are complex and time consuming.  To post a good Tweet or blog entry, one has to be a decent writer, know the topic, and study what others say on the Internet.  Making the case for dedicated staff to “do social media” is not easy and needs to be done time and again.

BB: What will be the final measure of success for your digital plans?

LS: For The National Campaign, there will be various levels of success.  On one level, it will be measured in terms of eyeballs and ears as the first big challenge is to raise awareness.  A higher level will have us evaluating whether some information is imparted and kept via the various online initiatives.  Last, we aim to reduce the rate of unplanned pregnancies in young adults through better sex education, raising people’s ability to have good relationships, a commitment to personal responsibility, and good state and federal policies regarding family planning.

BB: Do you foresee any particularly enticing opportunities that can help nonprofits/causes reach their social media goals in 2009? Any advice for how to take advantage of related trends?

LS: For nonprofits, the opportunities abound.  Never before has it been so easy, without the help of a development team and/or the media gatekeepers, to get your message out and create a network of people that care about your issue.  A good example is Today’s Meet . Excellent for back channel conversations, it can be set up in seconds and serve as a space for conversations that two years ago just were not possible.

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Marinel Mones | Posted in Interviews, social cause, social media | Tagged , , | Comments (2)
Dec 18 2008

Connecting GlobalGiving to Online Media

December 18, 2008 – 10:00 am

GlobalGiving connects you to the causes and community-based projects you care about through their online marketplace. Joan Ochi, the Director of Marketing Communications and Robert Dubois, a Marketing Associate who provides support to the organizations online social media strategy, share how GlobalGiving uses direct marketing to encourage people to donate to the causes they support.

Both Joan and Robert have experience in marketing-communications. Prior to GlobalGiving, Joan provided marketing support for clients such as Fannie Mae and HP. Robert worked at Burns Marketing, Colorado’s fifth-largest marketing-communications agency.

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BB: What was your biggest achievement on the social media front in 2008?

GG: Being a part of America’s Giving Challenge – an initiative spearheaded by the Case Foundation earlier this year. The objective of America’s Giving Challenge was to inspire Americans to use online tools such as widgets to participate in a fundraising for a cause – either a project on GlobalGiving or an organization on Network for Good. The Challenge ran for about 6 weeks and attracted over 130 “fundraisers,” more than 13,000 donors, and generated approximately $364,000 in donations. Interestingly, many of the top fundraisers who participated in the Challenge relied not just on social media tools such as widgets and blogs, but used traditional outreach vehicles such as phone calls and email messages as well.

We continued to experiment with other social media tools (Facebook, our own blog, Second Life, etc) as well, and learned that every tools is not right for every organization. Participating in and maintaining a presence on social networks is time consuming and resource intensive, and we found that merely having a presence on social networks has for the most part not been effective in developing online communities or building relationships with new or potential donors.

BB: Tell us about your organization’s marketing/communications strategy for 2009.

GG: Going forward, we are focusing on both acquisition and retention by creating a more engaging website experience – one that will motivate people to return regularly to take advantage of and participate in the more community-oriented features on GlobalGiving. Some of the functionality under development include fundraising tools (which would allow individuals to come together to raise funds for a project in which they have a common interest), tell-a-friend features that enable viral marketing, online discussions between donors and project leaders, and enhanced donor profiles.

BB: What big hairy audacious social media goals will help you achieve your objectives next year?

GG: Once again, we feel that community – oriented features – the ability for donors to connect and interact with project leaders, as well as with other donors – are becoming increasingly important. For example, if I can see what projects my friends support, I might be more likely to support those projects, too. We want our donors to feel connected – with projects and the people that run them, with other donors, and with the broader GlobalGiving community in general. Today, we enable donors to add comments to reports posted by progress leaders – we’re working to make this more dynamic and hopefully turn this “back and forth” into interesting, lively, and educational conversations. And of course, we’ll continue to promote widgets and integrate more video and audio (e.g. podcasts) into our site.

BB: How do you plan to integrate your social media efforts with the rest of your marketing mix (e.g., direct mail, email marketing, mobile, media relations, etc.)?

GG: We typically use email communications to encourage individuals to visit gg.com and engage on our site. Traditional media/public relations also tends to be very effective in driving qualified visitors to our site. Our goal is to create a unified/consistent user experience, so we employ landing pages that are customized based on where the person may be coming from – e.g. if we place an ad, we’ll direct viewers of that ad to a specific landing page that might leverage the same look/feel/messaging, etc.

BB: What is one challenge you face when executing new, social and/or digital media strategy? How are you overcoming this hurdle?

GG: Being a small organization, we have limited resources and therefore a very long wish list of desired features and enhancements – and of course, we can never get these features in as quickly as we’d like – so prioritization is especially important. In addition, it’s hard to evaluate how much time and resources to put into a new (and perhaps unproven) social media tool. We have to ask ourselves “is this the next best thing, or something that may fizzle within the next six months?”

BB: What will be the final measure of success for your digital plans?

GG: Put simply – meeting and exceeding our goals, usually around donation volume as well as other more standard web metrics such as conversion, bounce rate, repeat visitors, etc. As we expand our community, we will implement goals related to community participation and engagement, referrals, etc.

BB: Do you foresee any particularly enticing opportunities that can help nonprofits/causes reach their social media goals in 2009? Any advice for how to take advantage of related trends?

GG: There’s so much out there that it’s tricky to stay on top of all the latest developments. Reading blogs like this one :-) and taking advantage of the myriad of opportunities out there – from Google applications and seminars, to resources like Progressive Exchange, Net Squared, TechSoup – and you’d be amazed of the tips we get from Twitter, too! It’s important not to try to use every social media tool at once – figure out what your organization’s needs are, and then identify the tools that you think would best meet your specific needs.

PS. Could 2009 be the year that mobile actually breaks through as a social media tool in the US in a big way???

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Marinel Mones | Posted in Interviews, social media | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
Dec 16 2008

SocialFishing on the Association Front

December 16, 2008 – 1:00 am

Direct marketing is a vital and affective way for companies to convene messages to their consumers without the intervention of media. Integrating tried and true best practices from direct marketing into social Web marketing – and vice versa – is becoming the calling card among the savviest marketing professionals.

During the next week, The Buzz Bin will highlight nonprofits, associations, foundations and small businesses and nonprofits that use social media to leverage their direct marketing efforts to further good causes. The series will feature interviews and guest posts from several leading minds. We are excited to share a sneak peak at their upcoming marketing strategies and the valuable lessons that have paved the way.

First up: Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer of SocialFish, a company launched this year that helps associations use social media effectively. Both Maddie and Lindy have marketing backgrounds. Maddie used to teach marketing to Fine Art students in London and Lindy has over 10 years of experience in using both traditional marketing and new media. They agreed to share their perspectives from working with unique nonprofits and associations. image Grant (2)

BB: What social media trends are you seeing in the non-profit and association industry?

Maddie: Well, clearly, associations are just beginning to dip their toes in the water. There hasn’t been the competitive market-defined push that we’ve seen with for-profit business – but that’s good, in a way, because we can learn from mistakes made in the consumer world BEFORE we make them in the nonprofit world. Also, what are associations but groups of people united by a common cause or profession? The fit with social networking and social media is undeniable.

Having said that, associations are still very afraid to relinquish what we call the “myth of control” over their messaging and information. For cause-related nonprofits, we’re seeing more creative experimenting with all kinds of viral messaging and fundraising. Of course, in this down economy, both membership associations and community-based nonprofits need to be even more proactive about fundraising and community building around their cause or field. Donations and dues are clearly at risk when people are worrying about their jobs; but this is an opportunity to really prove that you are providing something of value that people will want to engage with and be part of. (And if you’re not, then maybe your organization shouldn’t survive in the long term, at least not in its present configuration…)

BB: What was your biggest achievement on the social media front in 2008?

Lindy: This has been a really successful year for us. We’ve created and nurtured a community of Young Association Professionals that has proven to be a vital resource for engaging the next generation of association leaders. We’ve had great success collecting example case studies from a wide range of associations. And we’ve made huge strides with raising awareness and educating associations about social media to help them look past their fears and embrace a new way of engaging with their stakeholders.

BB: Tell us about the marketing/communications strategies you’ll be bringing to your clients for 2009.

Lindy: Strategically, we think of three interrelated components…

Engaging your online community in your own web space—for lots of associations that means building a white label social network.

Motivating and enabling word of mouth—that means making it ridiculously easy and worthwhile for stakeholders to share content across their social network.

And reaching out to add value to online communities that exist in other social spaces around the web—participating in outposts and self-formed groups that are attracting an association’s stakeholders is integral to the big picture.

Every group will balance these three components differently. Since we work with membership organizations, we can get away with focusing a lot more attention on engagement strategies and community building…you know…building fans and spreading the love.

BB: How do you see social media integrating with traditional marketing methods such as direct mail, email marketing, mobile, media relations etc?

Maddie: Social media is just another way of communicating with stakeholders, or constituents, or members, or the public at large. The big difference is that there is a pull as well as a push. There’s an expectation of a direct, personal but public response to a query, a humanizing of the organization, essentially. We definitely always suggest that organizations use the communications tools that work for their particular audiences. This seems obvious, but there does seem to be some concern that getting into social media means dropping everything that has been done before, which of course no marketing department wants to do! It’s essential to “fish where the fish are,” to not only figure out where your stakeholders are already communicating online, but also to be aware that those spaces will be different for different groups (different target audiences) – generational differences come to mind instantly, but also certain groups of people in a particular profession might not be at a computer during the day, for example, but might really benefit from getting mobile updates. The other thing is to look at it from a budget – and a green – point of view – the several thousand dollars spent on just one postcard mailing could go much further used in conjunction with a social media initiative.

BB: What is one challenge you face when executing new, social and/or digital media strategy? How are you overcoming this hurdle?

Lindy: Last year it was the myth of control. This year it’s the resource question.

Maddie: Even free social media is not really free. You must have a well thought-out strategy behind what you are doing, because there is always a cost in staff or volunteer time, in “nurturing” time, and eventually, once something starts working and you want to brand it, or use more storage space, or integrate it with database systems, or migrate it over to a hosted space, even free tools start to have a cost. Social media initiatives are about the long term, about building community. There can be quick wins, and there can be short term, organic projects that come and go, but the real value is in building community that ebbs and flows and grows and becomes self-energizing over the long term. It’s about relationship management, between organizations and their stakeholders, and between people who have common interests. It’s about the long term and it takes time and effort.

Lindy: Associations are notorious for small staffs where everyone wears multiple hats. The perception is that no one has time to add social media activities to their everyday responsibilities. To me, that’s like an executive 15 years ago saying he doesn’t have time for email. Soon enough, social media will be an invisible part of the fabric of our life and our work, just like email. We’re helping folks prepare for that now.

BB: What will be the final measure of success for your digital plans?

Lindy: Funny you should use the word “measure.”

Maddie: Social media is so new and changing, and associations have such different objectives for engaging online. It’s still very difficult to measure success. Until there are better benchmarks out there, which will happen over time, each organization needs to figure out what engagement metrics they can measure to figure out if their initiatives are working or not. There are some good tools and companies out there that can help, but it is still really a moveable feast. It will become easier over time, with lots of comparable groups measuring comparable things.

Lindy: Personally, we’ll measure our success by watching the transformation of the traditional association model. We’ll be satisfied when more and more associations embrace new ideas about how communities form and function…when they redefine their role as community champions rather than gatekeepers.

BB: Do you foresee any particularly enticing opportunities that can help nonprofits/causes reach their social media goals in 2009? Any advice for how to take advantage of related trends?

Lindy: I see huge opportunities with older generations. The proof is out there that older folks are eager to participate online. If we can just get them past certain hurdles, usability being one, we’ll make great strides towards making social media the tool it promises to be. Especially for associations who attract members at a later life stage—after their career path has been set.

Maddie: Just don’t be afraid to experiment, especially in this economy. That is what the listening part that we all talk about all the time is about – you can spend some time just seeing what people are saying about you and in what social spaces they are saying it. If you work in a field with a decent amount of conversation going on, then you can dip your toe in by commenting here and there, on blogs, or replying to specific issues. You can get used to how the social spaces work before you figure out your specific goals and objectives and launch one for your own organization. And if your cause or field is pretty quiet, that’s good too – it means you can be the first, you can create whatever space you want for people to engage with you. Either way, don’t be afraid to have some personality, be authentic, and be creative. There’s a whole world of opportunity out there!

 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Marinel Mones | Posted in Internet Marketing, Interviews, social cause | Comments (5)
Oct 19 2008

Solutions Stars Video Conference Delivers Online Marketing Tips

October 19, 2008 – 5:39 pm

Solutions Stars Video Conference | Starts October 29 at 1 PM EST

Network Solutions is producing the Solutions Stars Video Conference on October 29 at 1 p.m. This free video conference aims to provide insights and online marketing tips to small businesses. It will be of great service to small businesses, particularly now that the economy has gotten tough, and it’s not as easy to attend a conference in person.

As author of Now Is Gone, it was an honor to work with Network Solutions Social Media Swami Shashi Bellamkonda and the 32 top bloggers who participated and shot videos with us at BlogWorld Expo.  The conference features nine different documentary style video sessions:

  • Building Web Presence
  • The Social Opportunity
  • Start with Listening
  • Strategy Drives Outreach
  • You Need Social Networks
  • To Blog or Not to Blog
  • Visibility Through Search
  • Rising Above the Noise
  • Time Demands

In addition to Now Is Gone Co-Author Brian Solis, Solutions Stars include:

  • Tim Ferriss, Best Selling Author of Four Hour Work Week
  • Guy Kawasaki, Co-Founder, All-Top
  • Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
  • Darren Rowse, Author, ProBlogger
  • Chris Brogan, Vice President of Strategy, CrossTech Media
  • Rohit Bhargava, Author of Personality Not Included
  • Wendy Piersall, CEO of Sparkplugging.com
  • Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger, Dell
  • Steve Hall, Publisher and Editor of Ad Rants
  • Scott Monty, Global Digital and Multimedia Communications Manager, Ford Motor Company
  • Liz Strauss, Social Web Strategist, Successful Blog
  • Toby Bloomberg, CEO, Bloomberg Marketing

    • I hope you can participate in this  conference and conversation. It will be well worth your while, with lots of great insights.

    In addition to the main site, please visit the Solutions Stars Video Conference event pages on Facebook and Upcoming:

     
    AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Blogging, Branding, Geoff, Internet Marketing, Interviews, Social Networks, social media | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (11)
    Oct 10 2008

    Recession Brass Tacks

    October 10, 2008 – 1:26 am

    brasstacks

    It shouldn’t surprise anyone to see posts titled "The Role of Ethical Brands in a Down Economy," "The Four Social Media Questions You Must Answer During an Economic Downturn," "In A Down Economy, Tomorrow’s Leaders Are Born Today," "Will Social Media Help PR Weather the Storm," and "25 Ways Social Media Prepares You for a Social Media Downturn." All of these respected marketers have the recession in mind (image by collective nouns).

    There were some great insights in these articles, most of which I liked Todd Defren’s statistical based analysis showing online marketing will be the bright spot in communications. I disagreed w/ some of Chris Brogan’s 25 ways (though I love Chris), but mostly because no one knows how social media functions and works in a recession. I think reliance on brass tacks, on hard core value building and ROI is what matters now.

    What is clear: This new media world will see an even stronger focus from corporate as big ad spends get cut and marketers seek guerilla oriented tactics. But things will change, and online communicators are going to be forced to act differently.  

    I’ve been through one of these before, in the telecom industry which suffered an industry specific depression from 2000-2. During that time I actually excelled and grew a book of business, keeping more than a dozen of my fellows employed. So while I will be deploying social media for the first time in a  recession, I’ve got a few experiences that are guiding my thoughts during this particular time:

    Here are five ways I anticipate this recession will affect us:

    1) ROI must become the song. If you can’t measure or you think page impressions represents an accurate measurement for marketing communications initiatives, mail it in. No company will engage in that anymore. Integration with calls to action must be used to produce tangible results.

    2) Similarly, social media consultants will be forced to produce or they will bomb. Now more than ever it’s about ROI, not Facebook friends.  

    3) Independent, positive thinkers will do better. They will not be susceptible to media driven BS and fear mongering. Consider this ridiculous CCN story that liberally uses poll terms to claim 60% of Americans say depression is likely. Talk about tabloid journalism. Yet, these stories can inspire panic and that is the great challenge.

    Rich Becker makes a good point, "When economic times seem tough, you tend to want to work with those who seem largely unaffected." In his post, he was speaking about the newspaper industry, but it may as well be your company. Executives and individuals will need to wield a sober, pragmatic approach to the market, and provide actionable ways to grow their business. More than anything people and cultures that win will be the positive ones with real value to offer their employers, their clients and the world in general.

    4) It’s time for millenials to grow up in the workplace. This is Gen Y’s first recession, and to date they have shown heavy demands for senior executive access and mentorship, lifestyle choices, collaboration, high salaries, plush bennies, transitory career paths, and steady, significant pay increases. More than anything it has been incumbent on employers to attract and retain them with these many cultural aspects. Well, the coin has flipped.  In tough times, it’s incumbent on the employee to prove value, not the employer. I sense that many over-privileged divas are heading for a rude awakening.

    5) More noise.  As companies abandon traditional, costly tactics and crowd the marketplace with their new social media initiatives we will likely see a new nightmare of corporate crud. Social media initiatives must offer immediate, clear strong value to communities, or they will click and flee. Substance is paramount! Tolerance for BS gimmicks will evaporate. Last recession, a similar noise level occurred with email marketing, that time’s cheap marketing elixir.

    A Time of Pain

    Regardless of how social media fares as a sub sector, I believe from a societal perspective that this will be a widespread recession that will take a good long time to get better.  Poor fiduciary lending has affected our entire financial industry and in ways that we’ve not seen in modern times before under the Federal Reserve. This will impact all businesses and all sectors, from credit to actual sales. My prayers and thoughts are with those who will be affected.

    Further, more than any economic downturn in my life, this will hurt the lower middle income and low income classes.  Consider the impact high heating costs, transportation costs, lost jobs from construction, cut state spending, etc., will make on blue collar America.

    There will be great challenges ahead that supersede "making money," and I encourage readers to think about what we can do to help as individuals. It is a time for charity, a time for helping brothers and sisters regardless of race, creed, class, religion. Economic pain affects all, and no American should go hungry.

    Related posts:

     
    AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Blogs of Fire, Buzz Meter, Geoff, Internet Marketing, Interviews, Livingston Communications, PR | Tagged , , , , | Comments (15)
    Sep 25 2008

    Dave Barger of LunaWeb: Memphis Gets Social

    September 25, 2008 – 10:00 am

    Geoff_Dave Dave Barger, President and CEO of LunaWeb, Inc. (a website company), is an avid believer in social media for companies. Known as a local internet pioneer, Dave helped start Launch Memphis (an event Geoff spoke for), a local social media networking group and works on local events like BarCamp. He is also working with local Memphis companies to embrace the new social web, and is personally active on social networks like Twitter and Utterli.

    BB: Memphis is enjoying the new rise of social media. How would you characterize your city’s use?

    DB: Memphis business has a reputation of being more relationship oriented than most cities. In this, some of the foundation is already poured and Social Media may potentially find an accelerated adoption. We are also increasing our national presence in Social Media through high-profile, progressive events and programs like the upcoming Barcamp Memphis, LaunchMemphis’ TechFuel events, as well as fostering Social Media through the Small Business Chamber.

    We’ve been accelerating adoption in the Memphis community through the Social Media Breakfast and Tweet-Ups, where we focus on helping newcomers get started in the social space. Of course, we also work closely with traditional media outlets to make sure these events get publicized to parts of the public who do not yet have a social media presence.

    BB: You are one of the pioneers leading Memphis. What’s compelling you to give so much?

    DB:     I’m extremely enthusiastic about Social Media and believe in its ability to empower the “voice of the customer” and everyday citizens. I regard Social Media as the fulfillment of a promise the Web made everyday citizenry back in the mid 90’s.

    That’s when I dove into this industry after experiencing first-hand a corporation’s compromise on ethics for the sake of profitability, and the poor job of stewardship to consumers by our government. Basically, my employer had a product catching fire in people’s homes and the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recall procedure was pitifully weak. The corporation, compelled to be profitable to its owners, went no further than the CPSC’s mandates to correct the problem. So it’s been very easy for me to see the need for The People to take care of The People and to have a platform from which to share joys, commune, and voice injustice by any entity.

    BB: Your company has transitioned from 1.0 to 2.0. How difficult was the transition?

    DB: Because the services that we offer have traditionally been 1.0 based web services, the challenge has been realizing that there has been some erosion of the 1.0 technologies due to the market’s embrace of 2.0 services over their 1.0 counterparts. However many facets of 1.0 remain a viable service set today. So we really haven’t shifted so much as we’ve expanded. Today, we still service many 1.0 sites that continue to serve the clients well and as such are slow to evolve.

    BB: Which companies in the Memphis area are using Social Media?

    DB: We’re seeing an increasing number of Memphis businesses adopt Social Media as a component of their strategy and their company culture. Germantown Performing Arts Center and many Memphis arts organizations are putting themselves into the social space. Other local entities participating include St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, FedEx, Small Business Chamber, and several traditional media players (local television and newspapers). Through LaunchMemphis, we’ve also seen a lot entrepreneurial businesses use Social Media to their benefit.

    BB: What’s your favorite social network and why?

    DB: I don’t have one specific social network that I could consider a favorite. Consistently, when I’m working I have a FireFox tab open simultaneously to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and as of about two weeks ago, Yammer. In a more casual setting, shut down LI and replace it with browsing expression outlets like Flickr, YouTube, blogs, and Social Median. The last one of these I’d give up though would be Twitter because of it’s realtime connectedness with my network, breaking news, and links to information that I find interesting.

    BB: Blog or Social Network, which is more important?

    DB: I try not to be a purist on multiuse platforms. Some will say that a blog is not a blog if commenting is not enabled, etc… Given the choice of having one over the other and considering the rich media, conversations, and a platform for any individual, I’d go with blogs. Besides, multitudes of blogs create their own freely connected Social Network anyway.

    BB: What’s next for Dave Barger?

    DB:         Ultimately, I want to help these tools a step further in acceptance and utility beyond mere consumerism and more into society to affect the greater good. If in the process I find an angle where we can fill the digital divide, I’ll step loudly down that path as it’s a huge concern that we all need to be mindful of, and continually look to fill.

     
    AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Marinel Mones | Posted in Interviews | Comments (4)
    Sep 18 2008

    NTEN’s Holly Ross Provides Info on Nonprofit Technology

    September 18, 2008 – 9:30 am

    Holly_Ross Holly Ross, executive director of NTEN (Nonprofit Technology Network), encourages and helps members to use technology as a catalyst for a better world. She uses her technology leadership and social media insight to plan and execute webinars, conferences, and research for the NTEN community and the nonprofit sector.

    Prior to her work at NTEN, Holly worked for social change and then came to nonprofit technology at CALPIRG, an advocate for public interest, while receiving her education at UC Berkeley.

    Holly is the keynote speaker for the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW) New Media Day (an event Geoff and Qui are co-chairing).

    BB: Tell us about NTEN. Is it an organization, web tool or movement (or all three)?

    HR: We ARE an organization, but it’s our members that make the organization matter.  So really, we’re a movement.  Through NTEN, our community is connecting with peers, learning from their heroes, and changing the world!   Individually, our members are working within their organizations to use technology to create change.  Collectively, the NTEN community is shaping how this generation of nonprofits will think about delivering services, raising money, and meeting the operational challenges we all face. 

    BB: Where do you see NTEN having the greatest impact in the next two years?

    HR: I think that technology leadership is the greatest challenge facing nonprofits today.  Effective use of technology can help us address so many of the problems that plague our sector, including declining donor trust, building efficiencies, and really measuring our outcomes, not our outputs.  I’ve blogged a lot about how communications technology like blogs and your web site can be used to make your organization more transparent, building and sustaining trust between you and your stakeholders.  As we enter this uncertain economic period, all of us will be called upon to deliver more services to more people.  Good back office technology systems can help us create the efficiencies we’ll need to serve more people.  Increasingly, technology can help us measure not just how many people we served, but how well we served them, giving us the quantitative and qualitative data we need to really understand and articulate our impact.

    Also – and I think this is the most important thing – nonprofits are about reaching out to and empowering their communities. Individuals are increasingly using technology to connect with one another, share information, and act on the issues we care about.  We have to understand the shift that’s happening and shake up our models of communications and service delivery to fit these new paradigms.  These new technologies – blogs, social networking sites, mobile phones, etc. – require that we move beyond translating our direct mail approach.  We’ll have to think up whole new ways of getting our work done.

    Put all these things together, and it’s not hard to see that leaders in nonprofits have to start rethinking their technology strategies.  And the technology-abled folks within organizations need to gain the leadership skills that will allow them to bring the case for technology to their leadership more effectively.  NTEN needs to help both those audiences get there.

    BB: Are there any challenges to getting there? (We know you’ll meet them head on – how?)

    HR: There are a lot of challenges to addressing the leadership question.  But, the biggest hurdle we face when talking to nonprofits about technology is resistance.  It’s not the money, and it’s not the time.  It’s the unwillingness to embrace change.  The reason it’s such a big barrier is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

    The key is recognizing that resistance to technology is not about technology at all.  It’s about everything but the technology.  People may be afraid of the new technology because they don’t understand it.  They may fear that the new technology will make their job change drastically, or eliminate the need for their job.  If you’ve ever had a discussion about databases with a communications AND a development staffer at the same time, you also know that technology can bring about rivalries and mistrust as well.

    So it’s going to be a tough job.  It was tough enough when we wanted nonprofits to start using email communications more.  And then it was pretty straightforward.  The transition from direct mail to email is easy to understand.  Email is a lot like direct mail in many ways.  But now, we’re talking about communication methods that have no offline analogs.  Try explaining Twitter to a newbie.  It works unlike anything else.  To understand Twitter is to experience it.  But first you have to convince someone to try it.

    I get discouraged from time to time and think that we’ll just have to wait for the kids who are in high school now to become leaders themselves. But, I’m assured that if we just keep preaching, the choir will eventually start singing.  NTEN intends to keep preaching the message.  We have a book coming out next Spring (Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Leaders), and we are also developing a fellowship program for IT Staff who want to build their leadership skills.

    BB: "Technology" is a broad term. What kind of tech crowd is most drawn to NTEN’s community? (e.g., marketing, IT, web development, social media)

    HR: We definitely have a little of everyone in our mix – it’s a very diverse crowd!  The nice thing is, we have places for folks of all stripes to hang out and learn from one another.  Out fastest growing segment of membership right now is definitely the marketing and fundraising crowd though.  Those folks have become accidental technology experts at their organizations and are looking for the leadership, ideas, tips and tricks that our community provides.  However, if you want to talk thin client virtualization or the latest in MySQL, we can do that for you too!

    BB: You’re the keynote speaker for Direct Marketing Association of Washington’s upcoming New Media Day. What do you plan to tell the diverse audience of direct marketers from nonprofit, government and corporate agencies?

    HR: The theme of my talk is "Lose Control."  No matter what your background in communications, that’s the strategy that you need to be thinking about these days.  We’re moving to a world where, increasingly, "Direct Marketing" is actually going to mean "Direct Listening." You won’t be in charge of telling people what to pay attention to anymore.  Your job will be to create opportunities for your stakeholders to experience your brand through conversations they create.  This means you’ll have to let go of your brand, give it to your stakeholders, and make the best of what happens.

    BB: Is that a preview of the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference?

    HR: First things first, let me just say how excited I am that Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody) is keynoting!  Secondly, there will be some amazing communications sessions on the agenda, covering topics from e-newsletter basics to advanced social networking.  But we’re also giving our attendees a chance to experience the content, not just hear it.  We’ll be hosting a bootcamp based on our We Are Media project that will teach attendees how to use social media like blogs, photo sharing, video casting, podcasting etc.  Then, we’ll set you up with the equipment you need to practice those skills at the conference.  Most importantly though, we’ve got lots of amazing opportunities lined up for folks to meet their peers and build the network they’ll need to sustain the energy and implement all the ideas they get at the conference!

     
    AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Marinel Mones | Posted in Interviews | Comments (5)
    Aug 29 2008

    Steve Spalding Sings About Grooveshark

    August 29, 2008 – 8:30 am

    stevespalding We caught up with Steve Spalding, the Digital Marketing Manager at Grooveshark (a music sharing community), at Gnomedex last week. Steve is an electrical engineer and editor of the critically acclaimed technology/business blog, “How To Split An Atom.” He is also a digital marketing and social web guru whose expertise is increasing the overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns through the Internet.

    Steve is also the managing partner of Crossing Gaps LLC.  He has built startups and counseled numerous CEOs and founders. Steve’s work has been cited in various sources such as the LA Times and Geoff’s book, Now is Gone.

    BB: Grooveshark is the latest iteration of peer to peer. Why is Grooveshark different?

    SS: 1. More than anything else we want to make it affordable and convenient for people to get the music they want, when and where they want it. The only way to do this sustainability is to make certain that the all of the rights holders get their fair share. That’s great, but what about the users on the network? We wanted to push the boundaries of the model and reward the people who are kind enough to share their music over our network. We do this through a 60/20/20 split for downloads. 60% of whatever we charge, which is anywhere between $.49 and .99 per track goes to the rights holders and the other 40% is split between us and the file sharer (in the form of a credit).

    2. We see peer to peer as a tool instead of the all end all. We have built a bunch of cool peripheral products that are fed by our peer to peer backbone — Tinysong (a URL shortening site), Grooveshark Lite (our streaming product), and a bunch of other little odds and ends. People seem to rely too heavily on the kitsch factor of peer to peer, we try to avoid that.

    3. 11 million songs. Our library is extraordinarily complete and the songs in it are very high quality. Our staff is made up of audiophiles and one of the first things they did was make sure that we had really robust tools to remove songs that don’t meet our quality standards. Add that to one of the strongest, most diverse music libraries in the space and you start seeing the real power of the network. I don’t know how many people have told me that after they got into using Grooveshark Lite they didn’t need to open up iTunes again.

    BB: Grooveshark will become inherently more social in its next version. Can you give us a sneak peak?

    SS: I wouldn’t want to give away too many secrets, but what I will say is that we took all the feedback we received from Grooveshark BETA, stirred it around a little and spit back out a community. We wanted to give users robust tools to discover and share music, while not making it so complex it is inaccessible. You can definitely expect stronger Artist / Album profiles, better ways to search for and share playlists with your friends, and *lots and lots* of ways for users to share their knowledge of music.

    BB: What is your specific role at Grooveshark?

    SS: I wear a lot of hats but most often I handle Grooveshark’s online marketing campaigns. I talk to bloggers, help with designing advertising campaigns, handle the public relations between us and the tech community and manage our blog and the surrounding rich media content. Most recently I have spent a lot of time with our blog. I always loved the 37 Signals model of corporate blogging, where instead of focusing strictly on the nuts and bolts of the company you create content that will interest your user base.

    One of our staff members is always out at festivals and we have brought back tons of interviews with big name acts (Vampire Weekend, the Fleet Foxes, Girl Talk) and in-house we have a really talented set of interns who churn out some really compelling posts on general music topics.

    BB: On a personal level, you are one of the successful bloggers at How to Split an Atom. How is the project coming?

    SS: It is going well. It has been my baby for just over 2 years now and I am really excited about how much it has grown in the last 6 months. That being said, we’re scrapping the entire thing and changing gears. Maybe that’s a little extreme, but it’s not too far off from the truth. One of the biggest problems in popular blogging these days is that we spend a lot of time circling around the same, common ideas. I hated the time I spent on that treadmill, and I wanted to refocus myself so that I never have to even look at it again.

    In the next few months we will be doing some really exciting things that will turn the blog into a place for people who are interested in web applications, social media, tech and business surrounding them can go for inspiration, education and most importantly act as a springboard to actually start *building* things again. The tagline I just made up on the spot is, "transforming ideas into actions."

    BB: Do you prefer personal or professional social media?

    SS: I like both. What I like about Social Media is how broad it is, because of what I do for a living I am always feeling like my personal social media life bleeds into my professional one.

    I think we will start seeing personal social media become more mainstream when it’s easier to decouple the two.

    BB: What’s the biggest challenge facing the industry today?

    SS: We underestimate our power, our power to change the world and change our lives using "social" technology. When an average guy like me can reach an audience of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in less time than it would take me to order a cup of coffee at Starbucks, I think that maybe, just maybe, we need to start looking at what we *do* with these platforms. What’s your cause? Do you want to tell everyone you know how much you love the MLB, maybe you can fire up some collaborative research tools tonight and help to cure Leukemia, it doesn’t matter — you can do it, you have the power.

    That’s amazing stuff.

    The reason I don’t buy the weblebrity shtick that infects our little corner of the blogosphere is because it denies the fact that we all can build whatever size platform we want from scratch. Influence is a hard nut to crack, but there are entire worlds of untapped potential still available. If you want to become the leading voice in Social Technologies in South-East Asia, you probably can still do it. Just because you can’t be "another Silicon Valley Social Media guy" doesn’t mean that all is lost.

    What’s our challenge then? Easy, relevance. We have a lot of interesting toys, why not turn them into something that history might actually care about?

    BB: What’s next for Steve Spalding?

    SS: Everything. I am working hard to make sure that people know about Grooveshark, in my free time I am building the blog like I mentioned earlier and in the next month or two I am finishing up a book.

    It’d be a full interview summing up everything so I’ll just say my Facebook status for a while will be busy.

    You can reach Steve at:

     
    AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Marinel Mones | Posted in Interviews | Comments (6)
    Aug 21 2008

    Beth Kanter on Social Media for Change

    August 21, 2008 – 10:30 am

    Beth Kanter Beth Kanter, a professional blogger and consultant to nonprofits, uses social media tools in the nonprofit sector for social change. Currently, Beth collaborates with the Summit Collaborative, where she helps build the capacity of nonprofit organizations through her works on technology evaluation projects, curriculum development, research and planning. She will alsobe a featured speaker at this weekend’s Gnomedex conference.

    Beth’s professional blog, Beth’s Blog, ranks as a top fifty most influential female blog. Currently, Beth is the Contributing Editor for Nonprofits and Social Change at blogher and writes for Netsquared blog. In addition, Beth has also written articles that appeared in nonprofit publications like TechSoup and Nonprofit Times.

    BB: What got you into this space, and what keeps you in it?

    BK: I’ve been working with nonprofits for 30 years! I was a classical flute major in music school, hoping to play flute in a symphony orchestra after I graduated. That didn’t happen.

    I figured if I couldn’t play a role on the stage, maybe there was an opportunity for a role behind stage. As part of my research, I interviewed orchestra managers about what skills I needed to learn or have in order to be an orchestra manager. This was circa 1979. The advice I got was: learn how to type. So, I took my metronome and practiced typing exercises at adagio (very slow) and worked up to allegro (very fast). I was a fast and accurate typist and that helped me get a job at the Boston Symphony in the development office. Not too longer after I was there, the first PCs arrived so I spent time teaching myself how to use it and then helped others in the office. My whole nonprofit career has been about following my curiosity – and self-learning and teaching others.

    I stay in this sector because of the passion, and the sense that you work has an impact. Also, most nonprofits have limited resources – so you have to be creative and I love that. When you work with or for nonprofits, small interventions can make a huge difference. All of these reasons keeps me in the nonprofit sector.

    BB: How has your personal mission evolved over the years?

    BK: If you look at my biography, you will see that I have followed my passions and varied interests in the nonprofit sector. When I first started off, I worked as a staff person for arts organizations for a couple of years before realizing that I was a project junkie. I was better suited to freelance work. So, for the first 15 years of my career, I focused on working with arts organizations as a consultant – in the area of marketing, fundraising, organizational strategic planning, and research.

    In 1992, I got obsessed with online communications, technology, and the Internet. I started working with the New York Foundation for the Arts as the community networker for an online network of artists. I was responsible for learning how to use the Internet (very early days) and then teaching others. That pattern again! During the 12 years at I worked with NYFA, I designed and lead many different technology training projects for artists, arts organizations, and arts educators. I loved it!

    Also during this time, I started to get curious about other types of nonprofits organizations and effective technology use – and broadened my consulting and training projects to work with many different types of nonprofits. In 2000, I started a personal blog about Cambodia to learn more about the culture and one for my professional training work – actually coding my entries in HTML from scratch. Someone introduced me to blogging software, and I was hooked. I’ve been exploring social media and Web 2.0 for nonprofits since about 2003 — all with the underlying theme of learning and teaching others.

    BB: What are you going to try to relay to our fellow geeks at Gnomedex?

    BK: That with a little creativity, fun, geekiness, and passion – you can use web 2.0 tools — like blogs — and go out and create change in the world.

    BB: How do you envision social media – the people and the tools – taking a more active role in society?

    BK: There are more and more nonprofits that have mastered the art of social media strategy related to their missions and programs and integrated with their marketing strategies. There are so many inspiring examples. I think of organizations like the Nature Conservancy, Human Society, American Cancer Society, National Wildlife Federation, Red Cross, and many others are using social media to create awareness, reaching out to the next generation, and inspiring action for their important work. The best examples are those organizations, like the ones I’ve mentioned above, who avoid shiny object syndrome and really connect their missions to why they’re using a social media tool. They’ve also done a great job of having the discussion internally and educating people within their organization about the possibilities. Another hallmark with the nonprofits that have used social media in an amazing way – is that they’re not afraid to learn and experiment.

    BB: If you could get all social media voices to unite around one issue, what would it be?

    BK: That question is hard for me – I don’t think I could pick just one issue!!!! I’ll start with my big passion. That’s actually the secret sauce of activism and person-to-person fundraising. Anyone who knows me, knows that I care for the children of Cambodia … particularly programs like the Sharing Foundation offers that helps life young people out of poverty. My family and I have sponsored a young woman, Leng Sopharath, for her college education – and it isn’t that much money in Cambodia (may 5% of what it would cost here in the US), but know that little amount will make all the difference in her world and what she can do. I’m also very interested in animal rights (shelter dogs are my weakness), creative commons, environmental causes, and poverty reduction programs that help young women.

    BB: Do you have any words of wisdom to share to the Gen Y change bloggers you recently featured on your blog?

    BK: Follow your passion and curiosity. Don’t be afraid to keep learning and sharing what you learn on your blog. I think Gen Y perspectives about nonprofit leadership and technology are fresh, inspiring, and very important for people who have been in the field for many years to pay attention to. These are our future nonprofit leaders. That’s one reason why I wanted to compile a list and do interviews. I also encourage them to continue to be smart and be professional, but don’t be afraid to challenge and keep us all thinking!

    BB: What about the Gen X’ers and boomers?

    BK: I’m a proud member of the babyboom generation and for some reason I probably have the technology habits of a Gen Y (or so I’ve been told) I know there are other folks of my age or generation, who are also big users of the social media and technology, but there are others who are not. For that last group, I would encourage them to learn from the Gen Y’s in their midst and honor their knowledge.

    BB: What’s next for Beth?

    BK: That’s a great question! Most people who know me call me "prolific" in my writing and sometimes I feel that my insatiable curiosity keeps me going in too many directions. I am hoping to have an opportunity to become more scholarly in my approach to the understanding of social media and nonprofits and take it to a deeper level. At the same time, some new areas of inquiry are attracting my attention. I hope to carve out some time for deeper synthesis, reflection, and creative thinking over the next 6-12 months and take my writing/blogging/training work to a deeper level. Stay tuned…

     
    AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Marinel Mones | Posted in Interviews | Comments (9)